He clambered aboard the truck and turned the key. The engine started at once, belting out a dull roar that echoed in the cavernous hangar. He spent a couple of minutes familiarizing himself with the controls and gauges and checked the fuel level. Full. He made a rough calculation in his head. Including the gas in the tank, and the extra twenty gallons stored in the four red gas cans in back, he figured the truck had a maximum range of four hundred miles. Then, considering the sheer size of the rig, he took a moment to rethink the probable gas mileage and admitted sullenly to himself that a range of three hundred miles was more likely the case. That they’d have to do a little siphoning along the way wouldn’t be such a big deal. After all, that’s how he had made it cross-country from Portland to Idaho after the outbreak. And besides, he thought to himself, if they got stuck in the midst of a zombie swarm, being off the ground in the big four-by-four and out of the Zs’ reach would be a fair trade-off for a little sucking and spitting.
Once he had motored the seat back, adjusted the mirrors, and was confident that he knew where the important gauges, buttons, and switches were located in the cockpit, he levered the transmission into drive and nosed the truck out of the hangar and into the early morning sunlight.
After a short drive along the tarmac, which took him past the blackened and twisted metal framework that was once the mobile medical until Pug had set it ablaze, he maneuvered the massive black Ford F-650 up to the main gate on the northwest corner of Schriever AFB, braked a dozen feet from the twelve-foot high concertina topped fencing, then powered the window down and waited for one of the guards to come to him.
He cast his gaze to the gate where a number of Zs in various stages of decomposition and undress were clustered together. He noted their bony digits probing the chain-link in a futile attempt to get at the meat within.
Purging the dead from his mind, Cade glanced over his left shoulder to take in the sky show. The sun had just begun to paint the tops of Pikes Peak, Cheyenne Mountain, and the rest of the eastern side of the jagged Rocky Mountains with broad strokes of yellow and orange. As he watched the colors morph and creep down the expansive flanks, a wide swath of burnt umber took over the center of the upthrust prehistoric mantle, leaving the base in darkness, lending the impression the entire range was floating in air.
“How can I help you Sir?” said a voice barely loud enough to be heard over the Ford’s idling power plant.
Snapping out of his sunrise-induced daze, Cade yanked the transmission into park and silenced the 6.8 liter V10 engine. He acknowledged the camouflage-clad soldier with a brief nod before producing his credentials along with a sealed envelope.
Shifting his M4 carbine on its sling, the soldier reached up to receive the offering, then cracked a wide smile and flashed a sharp salute upon recognizing Cade, whom, since the Castle Rock and Jackson Hole missions, had become somewhat of a celebrity on base.
“Good to see you, Captain Grayson,” the baby-faced 4th Infantry Division soldier said, taking the paperwork from the man whose exploits, past and present, he had heard a great deal about. “My apologies Sir... you’re not wearing your cover. I assumed you were a civilian.”
“No worries Sergeant,” Cade replied quietly, while wishing they would be done with the formalities quickly so he could be on his way before anyone else recognized him.
The guard scrutinized the freshly-minted document closely—so much so that Cade thought he might be memorizing his vital statistics and military ID number—then, after a long minute or two, the sergeant held the identification at arm’s length to compare the face in the photo with the living legend perched high in the truck.
“In the flesh,” the sergeant added, smiling broadly as he handed back the laminated green ID card. “May I ask a favor of you, Sir?”
“Yes. What is it?” Cade replied.
The young soldier straightened up and ran both hands over his uniform, giving it an impromptu pressing. “May I shake your hand? It’d be an honor.”
Palming his face with both hands, Cade sighed audibly then ran his hands through his close-cropped dark hair. He leaned his upper body out the window and gripped the man’s upthrust hand firmly. He locked his hard, no nonsense eyes with the staff sergeant’s. “What’s your name, son?”
“Leeland... Staff Sergeant Thomas Leeland.”
“Pleasure’s all mine, Staff Sergeant,” Cade offered. “Now I have a favor to ask of you.”
By now several of the men and the only woman who had been manning the gate had grown curious and were forming a loose semi-circle around the driver’s door.
A soldier yelled down from one of the towers flanking the entrance. “Hey Sarge! Who is it?”
Cade winced and retreated into the shadowy confines of the truck’s cab.
Looking around at his subordinates and still grinning, the staff sergeant replied, “Anything you need Captain... just say it.”
“That piece of paper you have in your left hand...”
Coming to the realization he was behaving like a star struck groupie, the young sergeant held the envelope aloft and said with a sheepish look on his face, “This... what do you want me to do with it Sir?”
White and devoid of writing, the envelope was the same type in which Cade used to send out the payment for the lights, gas, and water. Monthly responsibilities necessary to ensure the luxuries that he had taken for granted then, and feared would be of no concern to him ever again—at least not in his lifetime—and maybe not even in Raven’s. It felt strange knowing that the everyday commuting to work and bill paying normalcy called life that most people had loathed, yet endured, had disappeared only fifteen days ago—days that now seemed like years. Old world, different time. The world before Omega. The days before shambling flesh eaters choked the cities and streets across America. A different time indeed, Cade thought darkly.
Turning the envelope over in his hand, Leeland repeated the question. “What do you want me to do with this envelope, Sir?”
“If for some reason I do not return before o-dark-thirty,” Cade said, pausing to let the words sink in before gesturing towards the correspondence clutched in the sergeant’s hand, “I will need you to personally deliver that sealed envelope to my wife, Brooklyn Grayson.”
“Copy that,” said the visibly nervous sergeant. “I realize this is way out of line for me to ask you, Captain Grayson, but given the responsibility you are entrusting me with... I have to know just in case. Where are you going?”
“A personal fact finding mission cleared by General Gaines himself,” Cade lied.
“By yourself... without backup?”
“Yes soldier, and I need to be Oscar Mike, ‘on the move’ as soon as possible.”
“Wait one, Sir,” said the sergeant as he strode towards the gate, wading through his troops while warning them to get behind him and remain there.
Sitting in the cab, outfitted in desert camouflage ACU pants and a black short-sleeved tee shirt, Cade used the time to take a final mental inventory of his gear: his 9mm Glock 17 semi-automatic pistol rode low, strapped to his left thigh, right next door to the Gerber Mk II combat dagger that he never ventured outside the wire without. The Glock 19, a smaller version of the 17, was suspended under his right armpit in a Bianchi quick release holster. He’d brought along six magazines for the two pistols. He reasoned, if a hundred and four rounds wasn’t sufficient to keep him alive outside the wire, then he had no business embarking on the upcoming mission, which looked to be the most dangerous one yet. In fact, he had much more riding on it than the life of one man wearing three hats: soldier, husband, and father.
The white sun, now blasting at their backs, cast Schriever’s boxy silhouette in the form of stretched out shadows across the desert floor.
The guards looked on in anticipation, Cade included, as the sergeant unslung his M4 and pulled the charging handle. “Going hot,” he bellowed, and then after emptying his weapon with controlled accurate shots, the two dozen walking corpses that had
congregated overnight were left lying in a tangled knot, their congealed bodily fluids leaking black into the talc-like dust.
“Open the gate,” Sergeant Leeland barked as he presented arms and held a salute.
Though not in uniform Cade reciprocated, held it for a heartbeat, and then turned the key, bringing the V10 throbbing to life. Without looking back, he finessed the pedal and coaxed the beast through the parting metal maw and into Indian Country. He turned left and then made another left and barreled south paralleling the fence, dodging random walkers and leaving them in the truck’s dust vortex.
***
He drove south for a spell and then east for half an hour, following a laser-straight stretch of highway bisecting the high desert southeast of Colorado Springs. The four-lane black top took him by ransacked convenience stores, their trash-strewn parking lots still teeming with walkers. Along the way, stalled cars containing trapped zombies had become a common sight, and he’d seen too many seemingly abandoned farm houses for him to count. Suddenly he wished he hadn’t left his iPod full of classic rock along with his favorite Portland Trail Blazers ball cap inside his abandoned Sequoia on the road outside of Boise, Idaho, though the items were merely reminders of the old world. The world of convenience, filled with meaningless trinkets he’d never truly appreciated; still, he longed for some Doors or Rolling Stones. Hell, he thought, if it would break the monotony of the never-ending straightaway, he’d even settle for Raven’s favorite: Lady Ga Ga.
He reached for the dash and punched the stereo on, instantly regretting the action as bass-heavy rap music bounced him in his seat. Blaring from what had to be two hundred hidden speakers—but no less than twenty, he conceded—some long dead hip-hop mogul professed his undying love for bling, women, and New York City. Cade quickly killed the music, thereby sparing his ears and ending the unwanted ass massage. Searching for a radio signal in rural Colorado after a zombie outbreak, he learned, was a lesson in futility. Save for a couple of high watt repeaters broadcasting a looping FEMA message telling the public what they had already learned the hard way, the only thing emanating from the rest of the dial was a never-ending droning static of white noise. So he continued on in relative silence, with only the tires’ hypnotic cadence keeping him company.
He slowed to zipper the truck through pileups, off-roading only when there wasn’t enough room for the Ford’s considerable bulk to squeeze by, then after another twenty minutes had elapsed and fifteen miles of highway had unspooled in the rearview, a sign that read Yoder Population 222 flashed by on the right.
Getting close now.
Cade didn’t know Colorado from the dark side of the moon. The only reason he knew that this town even existed was because he had spotted it from his seat in the Ghost Hawk when Ari had buzzed it on their return trip from Sentinel Butte a week prior. And as he neared Yoder on the ground, he hoped the blink-and-you’d-miss-it town wasn’t as peaceful as it seemed from the air.
Chapter 2
Outbreak - Day 15
Schriever AFB
Colorado Springs, Colorado
Defeating Brook’s blackout job, a scalpel-thin ray of sunshine infiltrated the heavy wool blankets covering the east-facing windows. Lancing into the room, the honey-colored light fell perfectly across her closed eyes.
For a brief instant she thought she might have slept through the alarm and was running late for work—a cardinal sin in the nursing profession. Then a few seconds elapsed and reality set in—she was still stranded on an island of concrete and gravel ringed with barbed wire. The fact that Schriever was surrounded by cities and towns that were slowly but surely being purged of the walking dead and would eventually be theirs to repopulate brought her no comfort. She wasn’t unique. A few hundred other survivors, civilians and military, were stuck in the very same situation.
She pushed down the anxiety rising in her chest, sat up, and swung her feet over the edge of the bottom bunk. A Sealy Posturepedic it was not, but at least it hadn’t been empty the last two nights. A smile creased her face. The memory of her and Cade’s tender lovemaking, fresh in her mind, warmed against the morning chill. It had been quite a while since they had been intimate.
First, three thousand miles filled with multitudes of infected had kept them apart. She and Raven had been in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina visiting her folks when the outbreak began and, he had been back home in Portland, Oregon.
Then, after the Grayson family had finally reunited at Schriever AFB in Colorado Springs, the nonstop missions began, tugging them all back into the same kind of existence she had tolerated fifteen months prior to Omega when Cade was still an active member of the Unit—also known as 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta—or Delta Force for short. They were the best of the best: Tier-1 operators who were pulled from the ranks of the Special Forces or 75th Ranger Regiment.
“Raven... are you awake?”
A groggy-sounding voice answered from the dark, somewhere near the rafters, three bunks away. “I am now, Mom.”
Brook stood and did a few toe touches, bending at the waist easily. She put her palms to the floor and arched her back, a move which resulted in a series of soft popping noises. Then she heard the slap of Raven’s bare feet hitting the floor followed by a soft patter that echoed off the walls as the diminutive twelve-year-old threaded her way between the towering bunk beds.
“I heard funny noises last night,” Raven said, rounding the foot of her parents’ bunk. “Did you hear them too?”
“I did not hear a thing, sweetie,” Brook replied with a guilty smile that forced her to look away lest her overly intuitive daughter get a sense that a little white lie had been told.
“At least it wasn’t screaming like the other night,” Raven went on, her eyes widening. “What was that all about?”
Brook bit her lip and said nothing.
“Mom... you promised you would tell me.”
“After we get up and motivated and have a bite at the mess...” Brook winced at her choice of words. Not the best, considering the carnage that had taken place there earlier.
“What’s wrong, Mom?”
Brook pulled a clean shirt over her head. “Nothing’s wrong, sweetie... I just remembered something. That’s all.” Then quickly switching subjects she continued on, “So, Raven, after we eat we are going to have some Mom and Daughter time.”
“About what?” Raven asked. Then she thought, Oh no, I just turned twelve. Am I going to get ‘the talk’?
Brook noticed Raven’s face tighten. She hadn’t seen a look like that since she’d learned that Uncle Carl had died.
“What is it sweetie?” Brook asked in a motherly voice.
“We’re not going to talk about boys and girls and the birds and the bees... are we? Because you don’t have to worry, Mom... there’re no boys I like here anyway. Well... there’s Dmitri. I like him, but not that kind of like.”
Brook snorted, then covered her mouth, but still couldn’t hold back the torrent. And as Raven stared with a mortified look on her face, Brook laughed until her sides ached.
“Mom? Are you all right?”
“Come with me,” Brook said. She wiped away the tears of mirth and then cinched the long-sleeved shirt around her waist. Lastly, she reached under the bottom bunk, collected the short barreled M4 and the MOLLE rig—a vest with webbing and pouches containing extra magazines for her rifle—and led her precocious twelve-year-old by the hand. “We’re eating and then you get your birthday present.”
A little squeal escaped Raven’s mouth as visions of a foraged iPod loaded with ‘age appropriate’ music danced in her head. Ugghh,
age appropriate. She hated when her mom and dad said that. It was their way of saying anything safe and bland, usually from the Disney label that was totally devoid of sexual innuendo and any mention of partying or hooking up. They were the two words that just about ruled out every song that had been force fed tween girls prior to the outbreak.
Chapter 3
Yoder, Colorado
Squinting against the rising sun, Cade fumbled in his pockets searching for his Oakleys but came up empty. “Shit,” he blurted out loud. “You’re only thirty-five years old, Grayson; you’re too damn young to start misplacing stuff.”
In the distance, the town of Yoder, population two hundred and twenty-two, arose from the desert. One- and two-story buildings at first, then light standards, indiscriminately parked vehicles, and street signs came into view.
Nothing moved except for the flying rats. In the weeks since Omega burned across the United States, the buzzards, ravens, and crows took over the cities and towns that had once been dominated by living humans. The rapacious birds had also adapted, changing their taste from the occasional road kill to the rotting human corpses that were suddenly in abundance.
Cade eased off the gas and let the truck coast to a stop. His brown eyes flicked over the business marquees atop the deserted buildings. Nothing.
He slowly urged the truck forward, weaving around a putrefying corpse inexplicably still gripping the handle of an overturned shopping cart. Cleanup on aisle five, he thought morbidly. Garbage was strewn on both sides of the street and glass shards sparkled on the sidewalk in front of what he guessed had been the only bank in town. He caught movement in his peripheral vision as an intact page of newsprint, carried on a wind gust, fluttered across his line of sight. The words ‘Walking Dead’ registered in his brain like some kind of warning, and then the litter was gone, cartwheeling down the street.
He parked the truck two blocks in, straddling the yellow line, adjacent to a boarded up hardware store and a greasy spoon diner that he guessed had served its last Blue Plate Special.
Spoiling for a fight, he scanned the buildings on both sides of the street, paying extra attention to the darkened doorways and windows. Still nothing.
Keeping his foot firm to the brake, he pinned the gas pedal to the firewall. The power plant roared and strained against the mounts under its hood, threatening to lurch out of the engine bay. He eased off the gas and let the burbling exhaust resonate off of the buildings for a beat and then silenced the engine.
Allegiance Page 2
